And now, for a few lines from a contemporary poet of Mark Twain, one Julia A. Moore:

HIRAM HELSEL Air -- "Three Grains of Corn"

Once was a boy, age fifteen years, Hiram Helsel was his name, And he was sick two years or so; He has left this world of pain; His friends they miss this lovely boy, That was patient, kind and brave. He left them all for him to mourn -- He is sleeping in his grave.

He was a small boy of his age, When he was five years or so Was shocked by lightning while to play And it caused him not to grow, He was called little Hi. Helsel By all friends that knew him well -- His life was sad, as you shall hear, And the truth to you I'll tell.

His parents parted when he was small, And both are married again. How sad it was for them to meet And view his last remains. He was living with his father then, As many a friend can tell; 'Tis said his father's second wife That she did not use him well.

Just before little Hiram died -- His uncle and aunt were there -- He kissed them both -- bid them farewell, They left him with a prayer. Now he is gone, Oh! let him rest; His soul has found a haven, For grief and woe ne'er enters there, In that place called heaven.

Now, Mrs. Moore's esteemed contemporary, Mr. Clemens, also had some words on poetry. To whit:

I have thought many times since that if poets when they get discouraged would blow their brains out, they could write very much better when they got well. - Speech, Liverpool, 7/10/1907

Rapaire, that has not stopped enraged mobs from unearthing and desecrating the remains of people like the French judge Cauchon who condemned Joan of Arc. The attack on his grave occurred following her exoneration by the Catholic Church some decades after her death.

LH, he might be impugning dachshunds by the thousands, the millions, but what are you going to do about it? He's been dead for danged near a hundred years and as the trial of Pope Formosus demonstrated, it's pretty futile to do much to a corpse.

Now we are nineteen, one and ten And may we never be that way again. Lets us by ones and tens and hundreds grow To find the wondrous things there are to know And all the wondrous ways to do it. There's a game with certain flavor to it! For there's a hidden wonder, I confess In searching endless folds of pure B.S. Crudely disguised by calling it bullshit, A land of wily wonder, wags, and wit. Let us proceed, then friends, with laughter loud; And by proceeding, make Our Mother proud.

In the train, during a part of the return journey from Baroda, we had the company of a gentleman who had with him a remarkable looking dog. I had not seen one of its kind before, as far as I could remember; though of course I might have seen one and not noticed it, for I am not acquainted with dogs, but only with cats. This dog's coat was smooth and shiny and black, and I think it had tan trimmings around the edges of the dog, and perhaps underneath. It was a long, low dog, with very short, strange legs--legs that curved inboard, something like parentheses turned the wrong way (. Indeed, it was made on the plan of a bench for length and lowness. It seemed to be satisfied, but I thought the plan poor, and structurally weak, on account of the distance between the forward supports and those abaft. With age the dog's back was likely to sag; and it seemed to me that it would have been a stronger and more practicable dog if it had had some more legs. It had not begun to sag yet, but the shape of the legs showed that the undue weight imposed upon them was beginning to tell. It had a long nose, and floppy ears that hung down, and a resigned expression of countenance. I did not like to ask what kind of a dog it was, or how it came to be deformed, for it was plain that the gentleman was very fond of it, and naturally he could be sensitive about it. From delicacy I thought it best not to notice it too much. No doubt a man with a dog like that feels just as a person does who has a child that it out of true. The gentleman was not merely fond of the dog, he was also proud of it - just the same again, as a mother feels about her child when it is an idiot. I could see that he was proud of it, notwithstanding it was such a long dog and looked so resigned and pious. It had been all over the world with him, and had been pilgriming like that for years and years. It had traveled 50,000 miles by sea and rail, and had ridden in front of him on his horse 8,000. It had a silver medal from the Geographical Society of Great Britain for its travels, and I saw it. It had won prizes in dog shows, both in India and in England--and I saw them. He said its pedigree was on record in the Kennel Club, and it was a well-known dog. He said a great many people in London could recognize it the moment they saw it. I did not say anything, but I did not think it anything strange; I should know that dog again, myself, yet I am not careful about noticing dogs. He said that when he walked along in London, people often stopped and looked at the dog. Of course I did not say anything, for I did not want to hurt his feelings, but I could have explained to him that if you take a great long low dog like that and waddle it along the street anywhere in the world and not charge anything, people will stop and look. He was gratified because the dog took prizes. But that was nothing; if I were built like that I could take prizes myself. I wished I knew what kind of dog it was, and what is was for, but I could not very well ask, for that would show that I did not know. Not that I want a dog like that, but only to know the secret of its birth.

Finnegan's nails have been trimmed. He put up an even better fight than last time. It required 3 vets to do the job. One man to do the clipping, 2 women to hold the frantic little monster down! And a muzzle, needless to say.

I was thinking earlier though, that once we get over 20,000, there won't be any more pinwheels to be had for quite some time - about 8 or 9 years by my calculation, so I might have to learn to settle for palindromic numbers. Oh well.

Now I have to ask if Toronto still has a hockey team. In fact, I have to ask if there are any hockey teams left in Canada. I mean, if there are they don't win or anything, do they? But then I guess there are, because the US and Russia and other country have to do their recruiting someplace. When I was in Edmonton and Calgary I saw tee shirts and hats and things for the Oilers and the Flames, but I'm pretty sure those are cricket teams. Hockey teams have names like Rangers and Islanders and Bruins and Lightning and Red Wings and Blackhawks and Ducks and Coyotes.

In Canada? Far more durable. There is a Tim Horton's donut shop on just about every main thoroughfare of every city, town, village, and hamlet in all of Canada. In every mall. They're like a plague. You can't spit without hitting a Tim Horton's donut shop.

Yes, Tim Horton is a dead hockey player. He was a veteran defenceman for the Toronto Maple Leafs, way back in their glory days...and for awhile after that. He got killed in a car accident. He has the most enduring monument of any sports figure in history at this point.

That must have been the male tea, eh? I always get the female tea. You don't have to kick it even once, because it is mild and agreeable.

You're dead right about the grease and the sugar. Tim Horton's is into selling basically two things: caffeine and sugar! The rest of the stuff is just garnish. The grease comes mostly from the customers.

"Shane" is simply jealous of my capacity for beer and other drinks. He's insanely annoyed that I once drank sixteen more caribous than he did -- I was still drinking 'em when he came out of the coma.

I must admit that I've now eaten in a Tim Horton's, and apart from the fine film of grease holding the powdered sugar onto every surface it wasn't bad at all. My wife did find the tea to be a little more powerful than she normally has, but after she kicked it twice in the balls it settled down and she drank it.

I am back in my office, deep in the bowels of my home. I was here this morning when my chair exploded, too. Plumb shook me up, it did. I've never had a chair explode when I sat in it. Collapse maybe, but never before explode.

Post-morteming the wreckage, it looks like the gas cylinder that moves the chair up and down blew out. No, I'm not going to try to fix it and it's not worth fighting with the store even if I could remember where I got it.

FWIW, here is a link to some very basic stuff on dream work, and I bet you already know much more than that. I don't do much dreamwork in my practice - don't have the expertise and haven't studied it enough to feel competent.

I have done dreamwork in my own therapy. The therapist adhered strongly to the notion that only the dreamer is competent to interpret the dream, and that any of the people in the dream, especially unknown people, such as that baby, are very likely to represent some aspect of the self.

Amos, turn over your keyboard and thump it against the desk a few times. Then get one of those cans of air and spray it out. Some of your keys are sticking together. Either that or you had a stroke. . .

SOme think that bowels are unfathomable, or should be. It's a deep subject, though, and I wouldn't want to put my feet into it -- any of the six. Congrats MM, and you didn't even have to make the down payment, so to speak. I guess if your a great-uncle and Mom is sort of your pseudo-cyber-foster Maw, with a complex net of connections to many friends and relations, that means as far as Jordana is concerned Mom is a foster-frieze. Ya think?